1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to food packaging and more particularly to apparatus that facilitates the hand packing of containers of various sizes with products having fragile ingredients not usually adaptable to machine packing techniques.
2. Background Art
The automated packaging of food products is well known with special equipment being designed to facilitate the handling of the containers as taught by U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,722,048 and 4,439,101. The actual packing of the food products is taught by numerous patents, including U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,441,414, 2,664,833; 2,969,633 and 2,941,341. None of this latter group of patents, however, adapts itself to the handling of food products such as are included in specialty and refrigerated salad mixes. Most of the state-of-the-art machinery utilizes severe handling procedures that tend to break up, separate or whip together those fragile ingredients usually used in such product mixes, thus eliminating the homemade appearance and the flavor and customer acceptance most desirable in such products. Because of the fragile nature and consistency of such products, in that they do not flow by gravity, the products cannot be pumped, extruded, pressed or augered during a container filler operation. Most prior art equipment involves much rough handling of the product during the packaging operation, utilizing techniques that agitate, abuse or tear apart the ingredients so much that the desired integrity of the product is destroyed. None of the present available filling equipment marketed will satisfactorily perform the necessary tasks of properly handling such products. Hand packing of containers with ingredient mixes, such as the envisioned by the present invention, is highly satisfactory. However, the disadvantages attendant with normal hand packing procedures are obvious. Such lack of speed of handling and lack of uniformity in the handling procedure has limited hand packing in the usual sense to very small and limited operations. Other disadvantages of hand packing include the difficulty of keeping the outside of the container clean to maintain acceptable cleanliness in the sterility of the operation. Another problem is the maintenance of nearly exact weight in the container so that check weighing and any correcting operation can be held to a minimum. Conventional hand packing presents substantial problem in thse given areas.
Many of the above-noted disadvantages or problems have been overcome by apparatus disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,617,778 which issued to Applicant on Oct. 21, 1986. In that application, only one size of container could be handled. Accordingly, it is the principal object of the present invention to provide all of the advantages taught by Applicant's prior invention, plus the capability of handling containers of many different sizes.